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A good day to run black cattle

Northern Rancher said:
You know Silver we have Herefords, snow and sun here too-never heard many complaints about this problem up in our neck of the woods. Maybe we just selected for better udders-problem solved!!!
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We did, too. They were black udders under black cows. :wink: It sure solved our problem. :-)
 
I'm in total agreement with Soapweed. Why not eliminate a potential problem ahead of time?


A real good Hereford breeder south of Buffalo, Wyoming solved his sunburned bag problems this way. He fed the cows hay in a big circle.
Then he went along with his sprayer full of some purple medicated water. He sprayed those cows bags with the purple water mixture...and they didn't sunburn--or not many sunburned.

But they sure did look funny. I always wished I'd had a camera along when we drove by those cows. :shock: :P

Our wonderful old neighbor in W. Montana ran Herefords. He had some really bad bags in those cows. He had milked them out so much that he could walk in the pasture and milk them out right there. Guess that's why he kept them around--to have something to do. :shock: :P :shock:
 
I was going to respond but decided that I wasn't going to run another man cows down.

I like what I have for numerous reasons ...........the main one.......they put the most dollars in my pocket. I can't go and tell another man what to do...........he chooses his own path.
 
Well I've got baldies and blacks-I'll sell black cows anyday but it takes a big chequebook to get into the baldie pen. I used to have the all black blinders on to-it's a hard affliction to get rid of-they're good cattle but that doesn't mean they can't be made better. Take a look at the Angus Journal some damn sloppy uddered queens of the breed in there. Love your blacks all you want but don't stand on a good Hereford cow to get up on your Soapbox.
 
Why not eliminate a potential problem ahead of time?
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Apply that same criteria to the disposition problem in cattle!!!!!!

If you have pop bottled teats that hang below there hocks, you probably will have problems with sunburned udders.

Most people have forgotten what it is like or don't even know what it is like to work with tame cattle. They just build the corrals higher and get a Faster Horse :P

My Hereford cows will do anything these black cows can do and they do it on less. Just ask my nutritionist.
Brian
 
Hey SMN Herf, how did your heifer bull work out this year. You said you were going to have some more proof on him after this years calving season. Wasn't he a Braxton son? Let me know how you came out. Always looking to improve the bottom line.
 
The following comments are not meant to offend anyone. Ranchers can run any breed of cattle that they so desire. I wish all of you well no matter what breed of cattle you choose.

The following comments are made merely for the sake of a good arguement. :-)

Northern Rancher said:
Well I've got baldies and blacks-I'll sell black cows anyday but it takes a big chequebook to get into the baldie pen. I used to have the all black blinders on to-it's a hard affliction to get rid of-they're good cattle but that doesn't mean they can't be made better. Take a look at the Angus Journal some damn sloppy uddered queens of the breed in there. Love your blacks all you want but don't stand on a good Hereford cow to get up on your Soapbox.
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The first half of my life was spent working entirely with Herefords, so I am not exactly a novice on the subject.

My dad raised registered Herefords, and sold bulls. Don't think that wasn't a tough road to hoe back in the '70's and early '80's, when everyone was crossbreeding their Hereford cows with any other breed in the world except for breeding them back to Hereford bulls.

Cherry County, Nebraska, is the number one county in the nation for numbers of mother cows. The Sandhills Cattle Association, headquartered in Valentine, Nebraska, has for its motto: "When better cattle are produced, the Sandhills will produce them." During my lifetime, I have watched this premier cattle country of Cherry County go from being populated with 90% Hereford cows to being populated with 90% Angus cows. Are all of these ranchers that made the switch just plain stupid, or do you think there might be a few reasons why they made the switch?

My dad stayed with straight Hereford cattle longer than most. Eventually the long-time buyer of his yearling steers said that he would no longer be in the market to buy any more straight bred Hereford steers. My dad started crossing his Hereford cows with Angus bulls, and right away had a very marketable product. He also started buying Angus heifer calves and young Angus cows, which turned out to be a wonderful investment in herd improvement.

For many years, I have watched straight Hereford calves take a hit at the sale barns. Is this just happenstance, or could there perhaps be viable reasons?

In June of 2000, I had a chance to trade 54 pregnant fall calving cows straight across for a nice uniform Montana-raised reputation set of two-year-old Hereford heifers with Hereford calves at their sides. My thought at the time was, "How could a guy go wrong?" They were already calved out, with a one hundred percent calf crop. Believe it or not, it was a poor trade. I knew the straight Hereford calves weren't the greatest, but that summer I bred those cows to a couple real good Angus bulls. I just knew that the next years' calves would be nice black baldies that would fit right in with the rest of our Angus and black baldy calves. Those Herefords had nicely formed udders like what seems to be all the rage. The only trouble was they didn't give much milk. Those baldy calves out of the by then three-year-old Herefords were not nearly as good of calves as the calves out of my home-raised two-year-old Angus heifers. All of the half Hereford calves had to be sold separately because they just didn't fit my bunch.

It has been argued that a half Hereford half Angus cow is better than either a straight Hereford or a straight Angus cow. I would counter that point also, as I have had a lot of experience with all three prototypes. In crossing with a Charolais bull, you will get more uniform and heavier calves using a straight Angus cow than you will with a black baldy. They will also be more saleable, because the smokey calves thus produced will all have black noses. The buyers prefer this to the pink noses that often occur when a black baldy cow is crossed with a Charolais bull.

I have spent a lifetime ranching and following the cattle game. Do I just ignore all of the aforementioned circumstances, or do I step back and use this knowledge gained from the high price of tuition in the School of Hard Knocks? :roll: :-)
 
I remember when a grand champion show steer was shorter than a tall pig! And i also remember the 80s when if it didn't finish at 1500lbs you couldnt make it out of your class. Times and markets change, sometimes by the minute. Good Hereford cattle will always have a place when it comes to maternal and gentle, smaller frame scores, ect.. The market wants black cattle. Sale barns sell lots of black cattle. The Angus folks MARKET black cattle like crazy. Every restraunt advertises C.A.B.! And yet there are still breeding programs for Simmetal and Hereford and Charlois. And EVERY rancher has thier own favorites. Soapweed tells the truth about sunburned bags even if some of ya ain't never ever heard of it! I haven't been to China either but it's still there! So hopefully you good Hereford breeders will understand that no ones picking on ya. It just makes sense for some folks to run Black cattle instead of red and white ones! By the way, i have a nice Hereford cow right smack in the middle of my Angus sisters and she raises a nice calf every year. She is 14 and looks it but she still talks her way off the cull truck every year. Now you guys better start gettin' along or I'm gonna start raisin' sheep! That'll show ya :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
You were doing pretty good till you got into the black noses/pink noses thing-it would be a cold day in hell when I'd let a salebarn pimp try and discount Charolais calves out of baldie cows because their nose was the wrong colour. We've retained ownership on our calves for twenty plus years just to get away from that sort of silliness. there's about 100,000 mother cows within sixty miles of me so not my first rodeo either. A blonde girl slapped my face twenty five years ago and I'm married to a brunette but I don't have to diss blonde's every time I tell people how much I love my wife. Good cattle of any breed make you money-crossbreeding good cattle of two good breeds might just make you a little more-unless your still holding a grudge over a sunburnt tit from the 50's.
 
It has been argued that a half Hereford half Angus cow is better than either a straight Hereford or a straight Angus cow.
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One could also argue that a cow could be better and have neither in it :wink:
 
Well you can cross a billygoat with a good Hereford or Angus cow and end up with an F1 that will most times pay the bills. We used to have alot of Char/Hfd and Char/Angus cows they were pretty good criiters-we fed out all the Char. calves from them so our cows never got real big.
 
I've never heard the blonde/brunette vs. angus/hereford analogy. That's very very funny. Can you believe all this entertainment is free?!

I never knew what I was missing all these years. Keep it coming. :lol: :lol:
 
how did your heifer bull work out this year. You said you were going to have some more proof on him after this years calving season. Wasn't he a Braxton son? Let me know how you came out. Always looking to improve the bottom line.
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I am just finishing up with the AI sired calves. He worked fine for me. I calved about 23 head out of first calf heifers and I assisted 3 of them. 1 was backwards and the other two were hand pulls that came real easy.
His calves ranged in bw from 65lbs to 90 lbs. They appeat to be a little shorter gestation than the average Hereford. I need to put that data together yet. He does sire a little more bone than I would typically like in a heifer bull, but the shape of the calves is real nice.

I am putting my catalog together and will be sending them out today or tomorrow.

Thanks for the interest

Brian
 
Northern Rancher said:
You were doing pretty good till you got into the black noses/pink noses thing-it would be a cold day in hell when I'd let a salebarn pimp try and discount Charolais calves out of baldie cows because their nose was the wrong colour.
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You could always check it out on www.snopes.com to see if it is a fact or merely a rural legend. :wink: :-)

All I know is that it was told to me by a reputable order buyer. His clients know what they want, and since I don't feed out my own cattle, I need to be somewhat responsive to the wants and desires of those who buy my calves.

This same buyer gave an interesting presentation at a seminar last fall. He gave the "ten most important things" that an order buyer looks for when buying calves. I can't find the notes right now, but included were: "weaned" and "knife-cut." This doesn't mean he won't buy calves that don't meet his list of ten, but it does mean that certain factors influence how much he is willing to pay. Many years ago when I was selling Charolais cross calves, he sure preferred the ones with black noses.

The world doesn't run on reality so much as it runs on perception. How true.
 
Well I sure hope the 'nose' thing was many years ago. I fed enough Charolais cattle with pink and dark noses to know it's absolute hogwash. We ran white bulls here for thirty plus years. I agree proper castration is a major deal when buying calves but that's at the far end from the nose-well not that far in some of the 'modern' angus lol.
 
We experienced the same thing as Soapweed with the pink-nosed Charolais. At the time, (mid seventies) it was thought to be a throwback to some dairy blood in the background. Our order buyer in Gillette, Wyoming--a good guy named Bob Hayden wouldn't buy them...he cut them back every time. We didn't raise Charolais, (never have) but friends of ours do.

The order buyer of late, prefers the calves be knife cut...I think that goes back a long ways to when they looked at the 'pod' to calculate when the cattle were finished. Now, of course, they have other means to decide that.
 
The reason why buyers like to have them knife cut is because too many people don't know that when they put a band on a calf you need to have the testicles below the band. It is pretty hard to tell if there nuts are in their belly when you buy that 500 lb steer, but by the time they hit 900, it isn't too hard to tell. Most feedlot operators have better things to do than go fishing for testicles in the bely of an 900 lb bull. Its either that or take
the $300 plus discount per head for the stag.
 

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